Describing sociolinguistic variation in verb directionality in British Sign Language: A corpus-based study

该项目的目的是利用英国手语语料库项目（BSLCP, 2008-2011）收集的现有大型英国手语视频数据集，并对其语法的一个独特方面进行基于语料库的调查。在BSLCP中，数据收集了来自英国8个地点的249名母语和接近母语的BSL聋人手语者。这些数据具有语言社区的代表性，包括男性和女性，父母失聪的聋人成年人和父母听力正常的人，年轻和年老的手语者，来自工薪阶层和中产阶级背景的个人以及不同的种族群体。该项目的主要目的是利用收集到的数据来调查车贴语中方向动词使用的变化和变化。像车贴语中的ASK这样的方向动词在与发问者和被发问者相关的位置之间移动。因为这些动词包含了指向的元素，所以它们是手语所特有的，但它们在日常会话中的使用方式却没有得到很好的理解。这个项目将使我们能够将指示动词的使用与社会因素联系起来，比如签名者的语言背景、年龄、地区或社会阶层，以研究它们是如何变化的。了解像车贴语这样的手语的变化是很重要的，因为它们具有独特的社会语言学情境。只有5-10%的英国聋人社区从手语父母那里获得了手语作为他们的第一语言，大多数手语使用者在聋儿学校从聋人同伴或成年早期的朋友那里学习手语。由于这种不寻常的语言传播模式，再加上其他因素，如缺乏广泛使用的书写系统，在教育中没有使用标准的车贴语，以及与周围社区的口语广泛接触，英国聋人社区的手语使用表现出很大的变化。自20世纪80年代以来，在电视和更广泛的社会场合中越来越多地使用车贴语，这意味着这种语言正在经历迅速的变化。对车贴语中的方向动词以及它们的变化和变化的更深入的了解将会从这个项目中得到结果，这将会改善手语教学资源，更准确地描述英国聋人社区中一系列小群体如何使用这种语言。当前项目的另一个目标是将在BSLCP（2008-2011）下创建的部分视频数据集转换为正在进行的研究工作的集中数据来源，旨在了解聋人社区的BSL和手语。技术的进步使得这些手语数据的视频记录可以被给予语言注释，这些注释可以在线访问。过去，由于使用模拟视频材料和缺乏视频注释软件，在分析手语数据时无法有效地访问源材料。继BSLCP之后，第一个可用于手语研究的、基于网络的、可公开访问的国家手语视频资料集现已可用（www.bslcorpusproject.org），目前的项目建议将该集合的一部分转化为可搜索的档案（即“语料库”）。一个更易于搜索和访问的车贴语语料库将有助于对车贴语的结构和使用进行更多的研究。这将反过来改善对车贴语教师、手语翻译和聋儿教育工作者的培训。此外，该项目还可以将车贴语与世界其他地方相关或不相关的手语和口语进行比较，并将提高对人类语言的总体理解。

The aim of this project is to exploit an existing large video dataset of British Sign Language (or 'BSL', the language of the British deaf community), collected under the BSL Corpus Project (BSLCP, 2008-2011), and to conduct corpus-based investigations into a unique aspect of its grammar. In BSLCP, data were collected from 249 native and near-native deaf signers of BSL from 8 sites across the United Kingdom. The data are representative of the language community, including a mix of men and women, deaf adults with deaf parents and those with hearing parents, signers who are young and old, and individuals from working and middle class backgrounds as well as different ethnic groups. The primary aim of the project is to use the data collected to investigate variation and change in the use of directional verbs in BSL. Directional verbs like ASK in BSL move in the signing space between locations associated with, e.g. the person asking and the person being asked. Because these verbs incorporate an element of pointing within them, they are unique to sign languages, yet the way they are used in everyday conversation is not well understood. This project will enable us to relate the use of indicating verbs to social factors, such as a signer's language background, age, region or social class, in order to study how they vary. An understanding of variation in sign languages like BSL is important because of their unique sociolinguistic situations. Only 5-10% of the British deaf community acquires BSL as their first language from signing parents, with the majority of signers learning BSL from deaf peers in schools for deaf children or from friends in early adulthood. As a result of this unusual pattern of language transmission, together with other factors such as the lack of a widely-used writing system, no standard variety of BSL used in education, and extensive contact with the spoken language of the surrounding community, sign language use in the British deaf community exhibits a great deal of variation. Since the 1980s, the increasing use of BSL on television and in a wider variety of social situations means that the language is undergoing rapid change. The greater understanding of directional verbs in BSL as well as their variation and change which will result from this project will lead to improved sign language teaching resources that will more accurately describe how the language is used by a range of subgroups within the British deaf community. Another aim of the current project is to transform part of this video dataset created under BSLCP (2008-2011) into a centralised source of data for ongoing research efforts that aim to understand BSL and sign languages of deaf communities in general. Advances in technology have made it possible for these video recordings of sign language data to be given linguistic annotations which can be accessed on-line. In the past, the use of analogue video material and the lack of video annotation software did not allow for efficient access to source material when analysing sign language data. Following BSLCP, the first national web-based and publicly accessible collection of BSL video material that can be used for sign language research is now available (www.bslcorpusproject.org), and the current project proposes to transform part of this collection into a searchable archive (i.e. a 'corpus'). A more searchable, accessible BSL Corpus will enable more research on the structure and use of BSL. This will in turn bring about improvements to the training of BSL teachers, sign language interpreters and educators of deaf children. Furthermore, the project also makes possible work comparing BSL with related and unrelated sign and spoken languages elsewhere in the world, and will lead to an improved understanding of human language in general.